


Keteks

by Lightbulbs, she_is_rysn



Category: Stormlight Archive - Brandon Sanderson
Genre: Gen, Post-Book 03: Oathbringer, keteks
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-05-07
Updated: 2020-05-07
Packaged: 2021-03-03 05:35:32
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 4
Words: 2,552
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24039736
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Lightbulbs/pseuds/Lightbulbs, https://archiveofourown.org/users/she_is_rysn/pseuds/she_is_rysn
Summary: In the middle of the night, Shallan catches Dalinar writing poetry.
Relationships: Dalinar Kholin & Shallan Davar, Dalinar Kholin/Navani Kholin, Shallan Davar/Adolin Kholin
Comments: 14
Kudos: 22





	1. Mildly Stolen

**Author's Note:**

  * For [myshipsareendgame](https://archiveofourown.org/users/myshipsareendgame/gifts).



Dalinar

“What are you working on?”

Dalinar started, turning towards the voice. Shallan stood in the doorway, squinting in the bright lights of the library. The spheres she used to traverse the darkened hallway were still glowing, visible in the pocket of her skirt. She looked drowsy, arms crossed tight against herself as if for warmth.

"What are you doing awake?" Dalinar asked. No one should have been up at this hour. Then again, he couldn’t make any judgments on that, being awake himself.

“Couldn’t sleep,” Shallan offered, dragging a chair out from the table with her foot and plopping down across from him. “I know Adolin can sleep through a whitespine attack, but it still feels better to prowl _outside_ the room. So, what is it?”

“What’s what?” Dalinar wasn’t prepared for questions. The room had been so still, so quiet...

“What you’re working on.” Shallan leaned both elbows on the table, not exactly peering at his work, but not _not_ catching a glimpse or two. Dalinar fought the urge to throw a protective arm over the papers in front of him. It was nothing to be ashamed of, after all.

“Oh! Keteks!” she exclaimed, then gave him a questioning look. “Keteks?”

Dalinar sighed. “It’ll be a year with Navani soon, so I wanted to surprise her with something...special.”

“May I see?” Shallan perked up, then hesitated. “Unless you don’t—”

“Well...” Dalinar considered. He actually _was_ proud of some of them. Something about the rhythm of keteks had always made sense to him, and it was nice to be able to work one out on paper by himself.

“Please? I’m garbage at writing them anyway,” Shallan admitted, “so I won’t have any critiques to improve your form or anything.” She shifted in the library’s soulcast wood chair, tucking a leg under her seat. “I don’t think that’ll ever really be a strength of mine. Plus with people like Jasnah and Navani in the family, I’ll...I think I’ll leave it to them. And you, too, of course,” Shallan added hastily. Her spren made a purring sound from somewhere on the floor, sounding almost...sleepy.

After leafing through the papers, Dalinar slid one over to Shallan, who took it eagerly.

“Here,” he said. “The other ones need work, but I’m pleased with how this came out.” He jabbed a finger at the lines in question before waving a dismissive hand over the rest of the page.

 _United, our  
_ _marriage sings:  
_ _Defy darkness, love. Darkness defy!"_  
_Sings marriage  
_ _our unity_

Shallan screwed her mouth to the side, pausing just a bit too long before saying, “This is great!” Her bright expression was too exaggerated to be sincere.

“What,” Dalinar said flatly.

“What what?” Shallan replied, suddenly interested in the floor. “It’s great!” 

“ _What_.”

“Well,” she said, hesitating, “I can just tell that Jasnah is an, um, a big...influence. It reminds me a lot of the one she wrote for our wedding: _United, new beginnings sing—”_

“I’m familiar with it,” Dalinar interrupted. Storming girl said no critiques!

“Don’t get me wrong, it _is_ a lovely ketek. It’s just also…” Shallan grimaced nervously, “mildly stolen.”

“I would have said ‘inspired,’” Dalinar countered. Damnation, she was right. He’d used Jasnah’s lines as a model, perhaps a little too much.

“We can say ‘inspired’!” Shallan agreed helpfully. What a terrible liar. “But there’s probably some more original text somewhere on this table...right? Something that’s more...you?”

Dalinar hesitated. 

It didn’t escape Shallan’s notice. “There is, isn’t there?” she asked. Her eyes began searching the table.

“It’s not ready yet,” he snapped. Storms, why did he feel so defensive? “I...it still needs some work before I want to show it to anyone.”

“Sure, sure, of course,” Shallan nodded hastily, “I completely understand.”

An awkward silence fell. Shallan fidgeted in her chair. 

“I think I’ll retire for the night,” Dalinar sighed.

The girl started as he hauled himself from the chair, feeling a little stiff. Carefully, he gathered up the pages into a neat sheaf, placing them in a portfolio that rested on the floor. 

“Not a word to Navani,” he cautioned, rising from the table. “If she’s not surprised, I hold you personally responsible. Come to think of it—”

“I won’t tell Adolin, either,” Shallan volunteered. “Not a soul. I promise.”

“Good night, Shallan.”

“Good night.”


	2. Come Morning

Shallan

Shallan yawned, filing out of the meeting room behind Navani and Jasnah. They’d been convening with diplomats all morning. Something about enacting Roshar’s mercantile exchange program? Even if she hadn’t spent half the night wandering Urithiru’s halls, she would still have been sleepy after that endless meeting. 

“Shallan.” Dalinar’s voice was insistent, tugging at her as if she were an axehound pup. Veil had been very much looking forward to an ale, which she guessed would no longer be happening.

“Yes, babsk?” Shallan called, turning back to her father-in-law.

Dalinar frowned at the nickname. It was deeply uncomfortable for Shallan to begin calling Dalinar “father,” for a host of reasons, and both “Brightlord” and “Dalinar” also seemed wrong to her too, now that they were family. Shallan liked the Thaylen word as an alternative term of endearment, though she seemed to be the only one.

As she approached, Dalinar fished a sheet of paper from his pocket, looking around furtively. 

“Here,” he muttered, shoving it into Shallan’s freehand. “I did some more work this morning. I’ll be in the library again tonight, if you have thoughts.”

He obviously expected her to have thoughts.

Shallan tucked the poem into her safehand pouch without looking, though she was dying to read it. 

“I’ll take a look,” she promised, dipping unconsciously into a curtsey as if to initiate her dismissal. If this was all he wanted, Veil would still have time for that drink.

“Good,” Dalinar nodded, and he walked abruptly away. 

Shallan lingered for a moment, pretending to organize her safehand pouch as the room emptied out. Once she was alone, she pulled out the poem and read it:

 _Morning comes  
_ _Reborn, we rise  
_ _The past aches, our bones ache the past_  
_We rise, reborn,  
_ _Come morning_


	3. Own One's Battle

Dalinar

Dalinar tapped his pen impatiently on the table. So far he’d glanced at every page in his portfolio at least five times, but had somehow read and written nothing. Though he insisted to himself that he was only there to get more writing done, every sound in the hallway made him turn to the doorway in anticipation. Where was the storming girl?

Damnation, he’d written and edited an entire _book_! Why was he so anxious over five lines of verse, even if they happened to lay bare his most tender feelings for Navani? He’d confessed to much more in _Oathbringer_ , much darker and much worse. Dalinar wondered if the darkness was the difference.

By the time Shallan finally came through the door, he had given up all pretense of work and was examining his nails.

“Sorry,” Shallan hastily apologized as she closed the door behind her. “Adolin wanted to stay up and—” She blushed. Dalinar hoped she would have the good sense not to finish the sentence. 

“I read the poem,” Shallan continued, wisely shifting into a new subject as she lowered herself into the same chair across from him. “The form is pretty clean. Well, mostly. There are a few words displaced, one or two, but that’s fine. It’s fine, really. Just…”

“Just what?” Dalinar demanded as Shallan fished around in her safehand pouch. This was what he’d waited around for? A spluttering structural critique?

“Sorry, OK,” she stalled before finally producing the paper. “So, each line is supposed to express a complete thought, right? But the first and last lines and the second and fourth lines are sort of expressing the _same_ thought, just switching the words.”

“What do you mean?”

“Like…” Shallan squinted at the ceiling, as if searching her memories. “Oh, I really love this one: _“Fairness, unlike life / Squeezing tight, heartbeats / Drumming war and love, and war drums / beating, heart tightly squeezed / Life, like unfairness.”_

As she finished her recitation, she looked at Dalinar with a smile, pleased either by the poem itself or the fact that she remembered all of it. Or maybe both, he supposed. 

“I know that one too,” Dalinar replied petulantly. Storms, why was he being so sensitive about this? “But based on what you said, isn’t ‘ _squeezing tight heartbeats_ ’ basically the same as ‘ _beating heart tightly squeezed_ ’?”

Shallan screwed her mouth to the side as she’d done the night before. 

“Uh...I guess _maybe?”_ she said with a shrug. “But they _feel_ like different things, to me. Like the first one feels like when your heart is beating fast, and you’re excited for something to happen, but the second one is like when you’re holding your breath in suspense, because you’re scared of something that’s about to happen.” 

Shallan consulted Dalinar’s verse again, scanning it with a finger. “But in this one, ‘ _Reborn, we rise’_ and ‘ _we rise, reborn’_ weave the same picture. To me.” She paused, poising her freehand over the cluster of drafts on the table. “May I?”

Dalinar gave a curt nod, vehemently disagreeing with Shallan in silence as she rifled through the pages. He had been really proud of that one.

“Yeah,” Shallan repeated, bobbing her head as if confirming some personal theory. “Your form is better on these, like I would make a wall hanging out of them. Like this one.”

Shallan rotated a page containing a draft he’d abandoned days ago: 

_Battle one’s own  
_ _Rage in passionate nights  
_ _Love be bright, beloved  
_ _Night’s passion enraged  
_ _Own one’s battle_

Dalinar felt his face grow hot as he watched her read. That poem had a very...particular meaning to him. 

“That one isn’t right for this,” he grumbled, clasping his own hands under the table to avoid snatching the page away. Battle was a part of him, but it wasn’t a part of _them_. This was for her, for his gemheart. It needed to feel like _Navani_. 

“Right,” Shallan’s eyes darted up at his tone, and she studied him a little too closely. “Right, of course not. Maybe this one.” 

Shallan rotated a page to a few lines he’d abandoned early. 

_Life passes in years  
_ _Surprises unsheath, unfold  
_ _Hoping, not knowing we hope_  
_Unfolding, unsheathed, surprise:  
_ _Years pass; we are alive._

Dalinar winced involuntarily. He wouldn’t be able to handle this scrutiny much longer.

“I like this one!” Shallan complimented. “I know it’s not as, um...”

“It’s a mess,” interrupted Dalinar. “I wanted to try and describe what it means—all that time. It was...complicated for us.” 

Dalinar noticed an uncharacteristic stillness in Shallan’s typically fidgety form. She was listening intently, not half dreaming or whatever else she usually seemed to be doing. Dalinar felt both appreciative and unnerved.


	4. Heart's Gem

Shallan 

“We both knew, you know,” Dalinar began tentatively. “For decades. Not a word was ever spoken, but we knew. To say it was a difficult circumstance would be an understatement.”

Shallan didn’t breathe.

Dalinar sat back from the table, rolling his enormous shoulders and neck as he unhunched from his work. “And it would have been horrible - horrible, if we’d ever tried to—” He trailed off, as if there were several ways to finish that sentence and every one of them tasted bad.

_I’m in love with Kaladin._

No!

The thought pushed itself into Shallan’s mind as it often did: unbidden, unspeakable, and also completely undeniable. Shallan tried to stop her face from going hot, tried to head off the shamespren that might be drawn. Was it the same, what Dalinar was describing? Could she live like this as long as he and Navani had? Did she want to? Did Kaladin even feel that way about her in the first place?

Storms, was she waiting for Adolin to _die_?

 _No, no,_ Shallan hastily corrected herself, horrified. It wasn’t that. It wasn’t. What, then?

She and Dalinar noticed the silence at the same time.

“We’re both very different—sorry, what were you,” Dalinar mused.

“I do get the sense of—oh, please, go ahead,” Shallan sputtered.

They each turned their attention to the neutral ground of the page between them.

“What I like about this one,” Shallan cleared her throat, “is that I _do_ get the sense of time passing, of endurance. I know the form isn’t really there, but in this case I think starting with ‘life’ and ending with ‘alive’ actually helps you get across some of that time and growth. I...think it’s really beautiful,” She couldn’t tell if she meant the praise exactly, but she thought she probably did. It was bad that _she_ couldn’t even tell if she was lying sometimes. 

She found herself propping up her own head with her safehand. Storms, she was tired. 

Dalinar grunted, pulling the page back to himself, as if reconsidering the poem’s merits. “I suppose it’s asking for too much, trying to fit all of that into such a short—hold on.”

He searched the table for a second, flipping over pages, hunting for something and not finding what he sought. 

Shallan found herself wondering if Dalinar loved Evi as much as she loved Adolin. Of course...that was different in all sorts of ways. It was _different_. Shallan shook her head involuntarily, immediately hoping Dalinar hadn’t seen.

“All right, all right. Fine,” he grumbled finally, turning a half-filled sheet at a forty-five degree angle and cramming lines into the corner. He made no note of Shallan or her behavior. “One moment.”

Shallan took a Memory of Dalinar’s giant hand as it curled around the pen, looking like a hairpin in his grip. Churning out a whole book lent him a mastery with the script (Shallan tried not to think “ _women’s_ script”), and it was hard not to be entranced by the steady, staid progression of his hand. It was precise, but less severe than the razor-sharp points of Jasnah’s lettering. Unlike Navani’s excited scrawls, Dalinar’s writing was neat and almost squared-off in places, like a stylistic middle ground between script and glyph. Shallan liked looking at it. It felt very personal. 

Letter by letter, the poem unfurled:

 _Hands clasped together,  
_ _freedom in your safety  
_ _Gemheart, have me, have heart’s gem_  
_Safe, yours in freedom  
Together, clasping hands_

“I’d been trying to incorporate hands into the verse.” Dalinar held up one hand and then the other, gesturing at Shallan’s safehand sleeve by way of explanation. “You just reminded me of that.”

He cocked his head at the new poem, as if deciding whether it would be allowed to live another day. Then he sighed. “I’m too tired to look at this anymore,” he groaned, generating a crackle of joints as he tilted his head to one side.

Shallan watched him methodically gather the papers, putting his newest draft on the top.

“Are you up for a while longer?” he asked, halfway to the door. 

“Yeah, I think I’ll take a minute more,” she replied, reaching into her safehand pouch for a notebook and pen. “You inspired me, babsk.”

For once, he didn’t react to the name. “Good night,” he called, already closing the door.

“Good night,” Shallan said to the empty room, beginning a sketch of a very large hand holding a very small pen.

**Author's Note:**

> such gratitude and appreciation to Lightbulbs for being talked into working on this fic and improving it so drastically - s_i_r


End file.
